In approaching a book so spiritually great as Deuteronomy,
it might seem superfluous to allude to the
critical questions which have been raised concerning it.
On any supposition as to origin and authorship, its
spiritual elevation and the moral impulse it gives are
always there; and it might consequently seem sufficient
to expound and illustrate the text as we have it. Minute
and vexatious inquiry into details, such as any adequate
treatment of the critical question demands, tends to draw
away the mind, in a disastrous way, from the spiritual
and moral purpose of the book. That however is precisely
what the expositor has to elucidate and apply; and
so it might seem to be an error in method to enter upon
extraneous matters such as those with which criticism
has mainly to do.
On the other hand, this has to be taken into account.
The truth about the composition of a book, about the
authorities it is founded on, about the times in which and
the circumstances under which it was composed, if it
be attainable, often throws a very welcome light upon the
meaning. It clears up obscurities, removes chances of
error, and often, when two or three possible paths have
opened before us, it shuts us up to the right one. But if
that is the case when no special conflict of opinion has
arisen, it is much more so when a revolution of opinion
concerning the whole religious life of a nation has been
caused by the critical view of a book adopted by able men.
Now that is plainly the case here. Deuteronomy has been
the key of the position, the centre of the conflict, in the
battle which has been waged so hotly as to the growth of
religion in Israel. The attack upon the views hitherto generally
held within the Church in regard to that matter has
rested more upon the character and date of Deuteronomy
than upon anything else. Consequently every part of
the book has been the object of intense and microscopic
scrutiny, and there is scarcely a cardinal point in it which
must not be regarded differently, according as we accept or
reject the strictly Mosaic origin of the book as a whole, or
even of the legal portions. The difference is probably
never absolutely fundamental. On either supposition, as
we have said, the spiritual and moral teaching remains the
same; but the mind is apt to be clouded with harassing
doubt as to many important points, until clear views on
the critical question have been attained. This is felt more
or less acutely by all readers of the Old Testament who
are touched by recent debates, and they expect that any
new exposition shall help them to a clearer view. Many
will even demand that some effort in that direction should
be made; and, as we think, they rightly demand it.
But there is still another reason for dealing with the
questions gathering round the authorship and age of our
book, and it is decisive. The debate concerning the critical
views of the Old Testament has reached a stage at
which it is no longer confined to the professed teachers
and students of the Old Testament. It has filtered down,
through magazines first, and then through newspapers,
into the public mind, and opinions are becoming current
concerning the results of criticism which are so partial
and ill-informed that they cannot but produce evil results
of a formidable kind in the near future. By those who
are sceptically inclined, as well as by those who cling
most closely to the teaching of the Churches, it is loudly
proclaimed that the acceptance of the critical view—viz. that
the Levitical law, as a written code, came into existence
after the Exile, and that Deuteronomy, written in the royal
period of Israelite history, occupies a middle position
between the first legislation (Exod. xx.-xxiii.) and this
latest—destroys the character of the Old Testament as a
record of Revelation, and undermines Christianity itself.
The former class rejoice that this should be so, and think
their scepticism is thereby justified. The latter, on the
contrary, reject the critical conclusions with vehemence.
They have found God through the Scripture, and, resting
upon this experience, they turn away from theories which
they believe to be in direct conflict with it. To write an
exposition of Deuteronomy therefore, without correcting
the false impression that the critical view as to its age,
etc., is incompatible with faith in a Divine revelation,
would be to miss one of the great opportunities which fall
to writers on the Old Testament in our day. Questions
regarding the age, authorship, and literary form of the
books of Scripture cannot ultimately be so decided as to
nullify the testimony borne to them by the experience
of so many generations of Christian men and women.
Whatever makes itself ultimately credible to the human
mind in regard to such matters, will always be capable
of being held along with a belief in the manifestation of
Himself which God has given in the history and literature
of Israel. But nothing will make that fact so readily
apprehensible, nothing will make it stand out so clearly,
as an exposition of a book like Deuteronomy, which takes
account of all that seems established in the critical view.
Even the most extreme critical positions, when separated
from the totally irrelevant assumption (which too often
accompanies them) that miracle is unhistorical, are compatible
with a real faith in Revelation and Inspiration. It
is not the fact of Revelation, but the common conception
of its method, which is challenged by the critical theories.
We shall therefore only try to meet a clamant need of
our time, if we take with us into the explanation of the
Deuteronomic teaching a definite conclusion as to the
authorship, age, and literary character of the book.
As regards authorship, the ordinary opinion still is that
Deuteronomy was written by Moses. This was the view
handed over to Christianity in pre-critical ages by the
Jews, and accepted as the natural one. But if the Mosaic
authorship of the whole contents of the other books of
the Pentateuch is now given up, much more should it be
given up in the case of Deuteronomy. For Deuteronomy
does not even claim to be written by Moses. It is not
merely that in it Moses is often spoken of in the third
person; that, if it were carried out consistently, as it is,
for instance, in Cæsar's Commentaries, would be compatible
with Mosaic authorship. But what we find is
that the author, "whenever he speaks himself, purports to
give a description in the third person of what Moses did
or said,"[1] while Moses, when he speaks, always uses the
first person. The book, consequently, falls naturally into
two portions: the subsidiary, introductory framework of
statement, in which Moses is always spoken of in the
third person, together with the historical portions; and the
utterances of Moses himself, which these introduce and
hold together, and in which Moses always uses the first
person.[2] Again, wherever the expression "beyond Jordan"
is used in the portions where the author speaks for
himself, it signifies the land of Moab.[3] Wherever, on the
contrary, Moses is introduced speaking in the first person,
"beyond Jordan" denotes the land of Israel.[4] The only
exception is iii. 8, where at the beginning of a long
archæological note, which cannot have originally formed
part of the speech of Moses, and consequently must be
a comment of the writer, or of a later editor of Deuteronomy,
"beyond Jordan" signifies the land of Moab. If,
consequently, the book be taken at its word, there can be
no doubt that it professes to be an account of what Moses
did and said on a certain day in the land of Moab, before
his death, written by another person, who lived to the
west of the Jordan. The author must consequently have
lived after Moses' day; and he has taken pains by his use
of language to distinguish himself from Moses in a most
unmistakable way. It is no doubt possible, though not
probable, that Moses might have written of himself in the
third person in the connecting passages, and in the first
person in the remainder of his book: but that he should
have made the anxious distinction we have seen as to the
phrase "beyond Jordan" does not seem possible.
But if our book, as we have it, is not by Moses, but is
an account by another person of what Moses did and said
on a certain occasion, that fact has a very important bearing
upon the speeches reported as Mosaic. For the style of
the whole book up to the end of the twenty-eighth chapter
is, for all practical purposes, one. The parts where the
author speaks, and the parts where Moses speaks, are all
alike in style, and that style is in all respects different
from the style of the speeches attributed to Moses in
other parts of the Pentateuch. Consequently we cannot
accept the speeches and laws as being in the very words
of Moses. They may contain the exact ideas of Moses,
but these have manifestly passed through the mind and
clothed themselves in the vocabulary of the author of
Deuteronomy. Even Delitzsch is quite decisive on this
point.[5] In the tenth of his Pentateuch Kritische Studien,
after distinguishing the Deuteronomist from Moses, he
continues thus: "The addresses are freely reproduced,
and he who reproduces them is the same who also
contributed the historical framework and the historical
details between the addresses. The same colouring, though
in a less degree, may also be remarked in the repetition
of the law in chapters xii.-xxvi. to which the book owes
its name. All the component parts of Deuteronomy, not
excepting the legal prescriptions, are woven through and
through with the favourite phrases of the Deuteronomist."
Under these circumstances, the question immediately
suggests itself to what degree this representation of
Moses' legislation can be regarded as purely and unmixedly
Mosaic. Was this legislation given in the main
or entirely by Moses, and, if it was so given, may there
not be mingled with what he gave inferences drawn by
the author in whose style the book is written, and adaptations
demanded by the exigencies of his later times? A
full discussion of this point would, of course, be out of
the question here, and it would, moreover, be superfluous.
In Dr. Driver's article on "Deuteronomy" in Smith's
Dictionary of the Bible, and in his Introduction to Hebrew
Literature, detailed discussions will be found. All that
is necessary here is that one or two large and salient
aspects of the question should be looked at.
In the first place, it is important to know whether the
author of Deuteronomy can have been a contemporary of
Moses, or a younger contemporary of his contemporaries.
If he were, the relation between the speeches and legislation
in his book and that which Moses actually uttered
would be similar to that between the speeches of Christ
reported by St. John in his Gospel and the actual words
of our Lord. They might, in fact, be taken to be in all
respects a reliable, though not a verbal, representation
of what Moses actually said or commanded. If, on the
contrary, it should be proved, either from the character
of the legislation itself, or from the evidence we have as
to the date of the authorities whom the Deuteronomist
quotes, and upon whom he relies, that he must have lived
centuries later, then any such confidence would be
materially weakened. Now there can be no doubt, to
take the last point first, that Deuteronomy, taken as a
legal code, though not wanting in laws which have been
first formulated by its author, is mainly intended to be a
repetition and a reinforcement of what we find in the
Book of the Covenant (Exod. xx.-xxiii.). The result of
Driver's careful tabulation of the subjects dealt with in the
two codes is "that the laws in JE,[6] viz. Exod. xx.-xxiii.
(repeated partially in xxxiv. 10-26) and the kindred section
xiii. 3-16, form the foundations of the Deuteronomic legislation.
This is evident as well from the numerous verbal
coincidences as from the fact that nearly the whole ground
covered by Exod. xx.-xxiii. is included in it; almost the
only exception being the special compensations to be paid
for various injuries (Exod. xxi. 18, xxii. 15), which
would be less necessary in a manual intended for the
people." This is also the conclusion of other scholars,
and indeed is plainly demanded by the facts. It is, moreover,
what may be called the Biblical hypothesis, for
Moses is supposed to have been renewing the covenant
made at Horeb, and repeating its conditions.
But in the present condition of our knowledge, the fact
of Deuteronomy's dependence upon the Book of the
Covenant brings into view unexpected consequences.
It is true, certainly, that the laws of the latter code existed
before they were incorporated in the text where we now
find them. Consequently no verbal coincidences would
give us the assurance that the Deuteronomist had before
him the actual book in which these laws have come down
to us. But a conclusion may be reached in another way.
A comparison of the historical portions of Deuteronomy
with the corresponding narrative in the previous four books
of our Bible shows that for his history also the author
of Deuteronomy relies upon these earlier narratives, and
that he must have had portions at least of them before
him in the same text as we have now. The verbal
coincidences tabulated in Driver, pp. 75 f., as well as the
general and exact agreement in the events recorded in
Deuteronomy with those recorded in the earlier books,
show that the author has not only drawn his information
from the same sources as those of the earlier books, but
that he must have had before him at least that section
which contains the laws.
Now, as it happens, in the course of the analysis of the
Pentateuch it has come to be all but universally acknowledged
that Exod. xx.-xxiii. form part of a document
which can be traced, dovetailed into others, from Genesis to
Joshua, and perhaps beyond it. This document has been
called by Wellhausen the Jehovist document, and in all
critical books it is referred to as JE, as being made up of
two sections, one of which uses Yahweh for the Divine
name, and the other Elohim. The only generally known
scholar who denies the existence of JE is Professor Green,
of Princeton in America, who, rightly enough, sees that
the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch cannot be held,
if these separate component documents are acknowledged.
But the separate existence and character of JE may be
regarded as demonstrated, and also that it has been
interwoven with another narrative, largely parallel, but
which deals of preference with priestly matters, and has
consequently been called the Priest codex, or P. Together
these make up the first four books of the Pentateuch;
and the remarkable thing is that, both as regards
law and history, Deuteronomy is dependent upon JE.
"Throughout the parallels just tabulated," says Driver,[7]
"(as well as in the others occurring in the book), not the
allusions only, but the words cited, will be found, all but
uniformly, to be in JE, not in P. An important conclusion
follows from this fact. Inasmuch as, in our existing
Pentateuch, JE and P repeatedly cross one another, the
constant absence of any reference to P can only be
reasonably explained by one supposition, viz. that when
Deuteronomy was composed JE and P were not yet united
into a single work, and JE alone formed the basis of
Deuteronomy." And this is not Driver's conclusion only.
Dillmann, who argues with splendid ability against Wellhausen
for the dating of P in the ninth century B.C. instead
of after the Exile, and consequently considers that it was
in existence before Deuteronomy, still holds that in general
JE is the Deuteronomist's authority both for law and
history, contenting himself with affirming that D shows
undoubted acquaintance with laws, etc., known to us only
in P. Clearly, therefore, Deuteronomy must have been
written after JE had been made public, or at least after
J and E had been written.
The question therefore arises, what is their date? An
answer can be gradually approached in this way. As JE
reappear as an element in the Book of Joshua,[8] and
contribute to it an account of Joshua's death and burial,
they cannot have been written by him, nor before his death.
That is the first fixed point. Then we may proceed a
step further. In various parts of JE there occur phrases
which cannot all be later glosses, and which imply
that the land, when the writer lived, had long ceased to
be in possession of the Canaanites, if some of them do
not even presuppose a time when the original inhabitants
had been absorbed into Israel, as Solomon attempted to
absorb them by making them slaves of the State. Such
passages are Gen. xii. 6, "And the Canaanite was then in
the land"; Gen. xiii. 7, "Moreover the Canaanites and the
Perizzites dwelled then in the land"; Gen. xl. 15, in
which Joseph says of himself, "I was stolen away out
of the land of the Hebrews," a name which the country
could not have acquired till some little time at least after
the conquest. Further, in Numbers xxxii. 41, which
belongs to J or E, probably the latter, we have an account
of the rise of the name Hawwoth Jair. Now in Judges
x. 3-5 we are informed that the Jair from whom the
Hawwoth Jair had their name was a judge in Israel after
the time of Abimelech, who made new conquests for his
tribe east of the Jordan. Unless, therefore, the unlikely
hypothesis be accepted that both the district bearing this
name in Judges and its conqueror are other than those
mentioned in Numbers, the verse brings down JE at least
to the period of Abimelech, which Kautzsch in his View of
the History of the Israelites, appended to his translation
of the Old Testament, states as about 1120 B.C., i.e. two
hundred years after the Exodus.
The next step is suggested by Gen. xxxvi. 31-39, a
passage from JE in which a list of Edomite kings is given
with this heading: "These are the kings that reigned in
the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel." That sentence clearly cannot have
been written before kings arose in Israel; consequently JE
must be later than the days of Saul, and probably than
David, since the Israelite kingship appears to the author's
mind here as a firmly established institution. The author
of Deuteronomy must have lived and written at a still
later date, and we are thus gradually brought down to
the time of Solomon, or perhaps even later.
And the literary indications of date confirm this conclusion.
For instance, two books are quoted occasionally
in JE as authorities, which must consequently have
existed before that work—the Book of the Wars of Yahweh
(Numb. xxi. 14, 15), and the Book of Yashar (Josh. x. 12 f.).
The former has indeed been declared by Geiger to be the
product of false punctuation; but soberer critics have
accepted it and date it in Solomon's day. However that
may be, there can be no doubt that the latter actually
existed, and was probably a collection of songs, since from
it the verses describing the standing still of the sun and
moon are quoted. But we learn from 2 Sam. i. 18 that
David's beautiful lament for Saul and Jonathan was
contained in this book, and was quoted from it by the
sacred historian. The book must therefore have been
compiled, or at least completed, after David's lament. As
it was manifestly a compilation, and the poems it contained
may have been of very various ages, much stress in our
search for dates cannot be laid upon it. It is still of
some weight, however, that this post-Davidic book is
quoted by JE; so far as it goes, that fact confirms the
conclusion arrived at from other indications.
In the same way, the linguistic indications, though not
of themselves conclusive, point towards the same period.
It is, of course, true that we are as yet far from having
a general agreement as to the history of the Hebrew
language. That can only be established along with the
history of the Hebrew literature and the Hebrew people;
and perhaps we never shall be able to fix any definite
stages in the growth and decay of the language. Nevertheless
no careful reader of JE will deny what Professor
Driver says regarding them: "Both belong to the golden
period of Hebrew literature. They resemble the best
parts of Judges and Samuel (much of which cannot be
greatly later than David's own time); but whether they
are actually earlier or later than these, the language and
style do not enable us to say. There is at least no
archaic flavour perceptible in the style of JE."[9] That
is an admirably balanced judgment, and we may rely
upon the indication it gives as an additional confirmation
of what we have already seen to be probable.
It is impossible that these various lines of inquiry
should converge, as they have done, towards the early
centuries of the kingship as the date of JE, if Moses had
written Deuteronomy, in which JE is drawn upon at every
moment. We may consequently dismiss that view finally,
and admit that the author of Deuteronomy cannot well have
written before the middle of the kingly period. But we have
still to inquire what the character of the Mosaic speeches
and the Mosaic writings given in Deuteronomy is in that
case. Had the author lived and written near the time
of Moses, we might, as has been said, have accepted them
as the Church generally accepts the Johannine speeches
of Christ. But if the Deuteronomist wrote four, or
five, or six centuries after Moses, what are we to say?
In one view it must be granted that his account may
be as accurate as if it had been written within fifty years
of Moses' death. For an author of our own day, by
keeping close to original written authorities, and strenuously
endeavouring to keep out of his mind any information he
may have as to later times, may reproduce with marvellous
correctness the actual state of things, as regards law and
other departments of public life, which existed in England,
say, five hundred years ago. Similarly the author of
Deuteronomy may have handed on to us, without flaw or
defect, the information as to Moses' sayings and doings in
the plains of Moab which he had received from the written
accounts of Moses' contemporaries. He may have done so;
but when we consider that his authorities may have been in
part not much earlier than his own time, that the critical
sifting of history was then unknown, and finally and
most important of all, that the Deuteronomist has hortatory
much more than purely historical aims, we cannot
evade the question whether a good deal that is here set
down to Moses may not turn out to be additions to and
deductions from the original Mosaic germs of law, made
by inspired law-givers and prophets who took up and
carried on Moses' work. Many assert that this is so, and
we must face and try to settle the question they raise.
The theory held by those who most strenuously deny
this assertion is that all the laws in the Pentateuch are
Mosaic in the strict sense, that the codes were given by
Moses in the order in which they now stand in the
Pentateuch, and that they were enacted with all their
modifications in a period of not more than forty years, all
of which was spent in the desert. In order to ascertain
whether this view is tenable, we shall take one or two of
the more important matters, such as the place of worship,
the agents of worship, and the support of the cultus;
and we shall compare the provisions of the various codes in
order to see whether they can be supposed to belong to
so short a period, or to have been all enacted by one man.
Let us take first the place of worship. The three codes—that
called the Book of the Covenant (Exod. xx.-xxiii.),
that contained in Leviticus and Numbers and called the
Levitical code, and that in Deuteronomy—all contain
directions about this. In the first the prescriptions are
(Exod. xx. 24): "An altar of earth shalt thou make to Me,
and thou shalt sacrifice upon it thy burnt offerings and
thy peace offerings, thy sheep and thy oxen. In every
place where I cause My name to be remembered I will come
unto and bless thee." In the Levitical law "the altar"
is to be of Shittim or acacia wood overlaid with copper,
and the place for it is to be in the court of the Tabernacle.
There all sacrifices are to be offered, and thither every
slaughtered animal is to be brought (Lev. xvii. 1 ff.), and
this is to be a statute for ever unto them throughout their
generations. In Deuteronomy again (chap. xii.) it is
enacted that all sacrifices are to be brought "unto the
place which Yahweh your God shall choose out of all
your tribes to put His name there," and ver. 21, "If the
place which Yahweh thy God hath chosen to put His
name there be too far from thee, then thou shalt kill of
thy herd and of thy flock" and eat them as game was
eaten without bringing it to the Sanctuary. But Moses
is not represented as ordering this law to be introduced
immediately. It is only when they go over Jordan and
dwell in the land which Yahweh their God giveth them,
and when He giveth them rest from all their enemies
round about so that they dwell in safety, that they are to
do this. Nay, according to ver. 20 the new order is to
be fully introduced only when Yahweh their God shall
enlarge their border as He had promised, i.e. when their
boundaries should be (xi. 24) the wilderness on the
south and Lebanon on the north, the Euphrates on the
east and the Mediterranean on the west. Now these
boundaries were attained only in David's day, and the
rest from all their enemies round about was, as Dillmann
says, given as a matter of fact only in the times of David
and Solomon (cf. 2 Sam. vii. 11 and 1 Kings v. 18), notwithstanding
Josh. xxi. 42. Consequently the Temple at
Jerusalem must have been the place referred to. This is
distinctly the view of 1 Kings iii. 3 and viii. 16. The
latter passage is peculiarly emphatic. Solomon says, at
the dedication of the Temple, "Since the day that I
brought forth My people Israel out of Egypt, I chose no
city out of all the tribes of Israel to build an house that
My name might be therein." The Deuteronomic view
consequently is that the law requiring sacrifice at one
sole altar was intended by Moses to be enforced only
after the Temple at Jerusalem had been built.
These are the provisions of the three codes. Can they
have been the successive ordinances of a man legislating
under the influence of Divine inspiration within a period of
less than forty years? Let us see. The first legislation
was given at Sinai, in the third month after the Exodus:
the Levitical legislation on the matter was given about
nine months later when the Tabernacle was finished,
and during that time they had not removed from Sinai:
thirty-eight years afterwards the Deuteronomic code was
given in the plains of Moab. Let us look at the character
of the legislation given first of all at Sinai. The
meaning of the decisive phrase, "In every place where I
cause My name to be remembered I will come unto thee
and bless thee," has been much discussed; yet taken as it
stands, without reference to laws which on any supposition
are later, it cannot mean that sacrifices were to be offered
only at one central shrine. It specially provides for
sacrifices being offered at different places, but restricts
them to places which Yahweh Himself has chosen. At
every such place He promises to come to them and bless
them. So much, men of all schools admit; difference of
opinion arises only as to whether these places are meant
to be successive, or whether they may be simultaneous.
The view of those who accept all the legislation of the
Pentateuch as Mosaic in the strict sense is that the
places could only be successive, since otherwise the words
would imply that originally worship at one altar was not
prescribed. Delitzsch, for example, maintains that these
words imply necessarily only this, that the place of
sacrifice would, in the course of time, be altered by
Divine appointment, and he declares that to be their
meaning. Others, again, suppose that the command was
meant only to justify worship at the various places where
the Tabernacle was called to halt on the people's journeyings,
whether in the wilderness or in Palestine. Now
it cannot be denied that only on some such interpretation
can Exodus be brought into harmony with Leviticus,
and that undoubtedly has influenced, and rightly so, the
scholars who take this view. If it were tenable it would
be by far the most satisfactory interpretation. But it can
hardly be considered tenable if we look at the time at
which this law was given. There was as yet no other
law, and this was given as soon as the people came to
Mount Sinai. The law in Leviticus was not on any
supposition given till nine months later. Now, if
Exod. xx. 24 was meant for immediate use only, and was
superseded by the Levitical law after so short a time,
it is difficult to understand why it was given, and still
more difficult to conceive why it was preserved. In any
case it cannot have been understood to command worship
at only one place. It could have no other sense than that
the people, so long as they were at Sinai, were to sacrifice
only at Sinai where Yahweh had revealed Himself, or
at other places in the neighbourhood which He should
sanctify, or had sanctified, by revealing His presence at
them. At any such place, if there He had once revealed
Himself, He would continue to meet them. Without the
colour thrown upon them by succeeding laws, that is
surely the only meaning that could be put upon the words,
and so understood they undoubtedly authorise sacrifice
at two or more places simultaneously. If, on the other
hand, this law was meant more for the future than the
present, as some of the laws in the Book of the Covenant
undoubtedly were, it must have been intended to be in
force concurrently with Lev. i. f. But if so, the "places"
it refers to cannot be the mere halting-places on the
wilderness journey. No doubt these were determined
by Yahweh, and the tabernacle was set up at places He
may be said to have chosen, but the places themselves
were of no consequence at all. The Divine presence
is declared to be always in the Tabernacle. That was
certainly a place where Yahweh caused His name to be
remembered, and without further inquiry about place, the
men of Israel knew that He would always meet them and
bless them in sacrifice there. The different character of
the altar in the Book of the Covenant too, a mere heap
of earth or unhewn stone, and that in the Tabernacle,
made of acacia wood overlaid with copper, corroborates
the view that the altar aimed at in Exod. xxiv. is not
the Tabernacle altar. The only coherent view, on the
supposition of the concurrence of the two laws, is therefore
that while, as a rule, sacrifice was to be offered at
the Tabernacle, yet if the people came to any place where
Yahweh had caused His name to be remembered, sacrifice
might be offered there on an altar of earth or unhewn
stone, as well as at the Tabernacle. Either way therefore
there is permission to worship at more than one
place. But then the difficulty is that Leviticus appears
to denounce upon pain of being "cut off from the people"
absolutely every sacrifice not offered at the Tabernacle.
Now if so far matters have been far from clear on the
traditional supposition of the date and order of these
codes, a glance at Deuteronomy will produce absolute
confusion in every mind. As we have seen, Deuteronomy
represents Moses as restricting sacrifice most rigorously
to one altar after the building of the Temple at Jerusalem,
but virtually declaring that worship at various shrines
was to be blameless until that time. We have also seen
that that is the view taken by the author of the Book
of Kings. Now this might be regarded as a temporary
relaxation of the law, intended to meet the difficult circumstances
of a period of war and conquest, were it not for
one thing. That is, that Moses in Deut. xii. 8, after
prescribing worship at one altar, adds, "Ye shall not do
after all that we do here this day, every man whatsoever
is right in his own eyes," and as if to render mistake as
to the meaning impossible, in ver. 13 he explains ver. 8
thus: "Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy
burnt offerings in every place that thou seest." Notwithstanding
the efforts of conservative scholars like Keil and
Bredenkamp to explain ver. 8 as a reference to the intermissions
in, e.g., the daily sacrifice, brought about by the
desert wanderings, or to the arbitrariness and illegality
of the generation which had brought judgment upon
themselves by refusal to obey Yahweh in attacking Canaan,
it still seems impossible to accept that view. Of course
if we knew that Moses was the giver of all these laws,
these words would have to be explained away in some
such fashion. But if they are approached by an inquirer
seeking to discover whether they all are Mosaic, sound
exegesis demands that they should be taken as Dillmann
and others take them. In the plain sense of words
Moses here admits that, up till the time at which he is
speaking, sacrifices were offered wherever men chose, and
that he had participated in the practice. And observe,
he does not refer to the Levitical law. He does not say
this conduct of ours is a sin which we must repent of
and turn from at once. He calmly permits this state
of things to continue after Israel is in Canaan, and looks
forward with equanimity to its continuance till the Temple
shall be erected in Jerusalem. With this passage before
us we ask, Can this be the same inspired legislator who
thirty-eight years before compelled sacrifice at one central
altar on pain of death?
The traditional hypothesis being thus encompassed
with difficulties, students of the Old Testament have
sought another which would correspond better with all
the data. Relying upon the fact that the author of
Deuteronomy founds his book almost entirely on JE,
and that if he knows some of the laws and some of the
facts mentioned in P only, there are no proofs that he
knew that book as we have it, they put it aside in
this matter also. Immediately, when that is done, light
breaks in upon our problem. If we take Exod. xxiv. 20
in the natural sense given to it above, sacrifice at various
altars was permitted from Sinai onwards, the only limitation
being that there should have been, at the place
chosen, authentic proof of a theophany or some other
manifestation of the Divine presence. That is the state of
things out of which Moses speaks in Deuteronomy. It will
be noticed, however, that there is a slight contradiction
of Exod. xx. 24. The Moses of Deuteronomy speaks as
if every man's arbitrary choice had been his only guide.
Probably, however, with his mind full of the stringent unity
he desires to see, he speaks hyperbolically of the looseness
of the former law, and means nothing else than the
practice prescribed by it. In all ways this view is supported
by the history. From the patriarchs till the time
of Samuel, the practice was to sacrifice at various altars.[10]
Consequently, according to both the Book of the Covenant
and Deuteronomy, and according to the history,
the worship of Yahweh at sacred places throughout
the land was legal, until the Temple was erected at
Jerusalem. The centralisation of worship was, consequently,
a new thing when the division of the kingdoms
took place, and was not an express law till Deuteronomy.
If that book was not written till perhaps Hezekiah's day,
the fact will account as nothing else will do for Elijah's
words (1 Kings xix. 10), "The children of Israel have
forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and
slain Thy prophets with the sword." Even in the
presence of Yahweh he, without rebuke, calls the altars
in the Northern Kingdom His.
The first attempt we know of to centralise worship was
made by Hezekiah; a second and more strenuous attempt
was made under Josiah, but the work was not actually
accomplished till after the Return from the Captivity. All
the facts taken together suggest that the movement towards
centralisation was an age-long development. At first
all holy places might be sacrificed at, though a certain
primacy belonged to a central sanctuary, and this may
have been stamped by Moses with approval. When the
Solomonic Temple was built the primacy began to take the
form of a claim for exclusive validity. The experiences
in both kingdoms strengthened that claim, by showing
that if Yahwism was to be kept pure the worship at the
High Places must be abolished. The inspired writer of
Deuteronomy then completed Moses' work by embodying
that which had been always a tendency of the Mosaic
system, and had now become a necessity, in his revisal of
the Mosaic legislation. This was adopted by the nation
under Josiah, and the Priest Codex must in that case
represent a later stage of the development, when the
centralisation was neither a tendency nor a demand, but
a realised fact. Such a process accounts much better
for the facts than the traditional belief; and though it is
not free from difficulties it at least releases us from the
confusion of mind which the ordinary supposition forces
upon us.
The inquiry as to the agents of the cultus need not
detain us so long. In the Book of the Covenant no
priests are mentioned at all. The person addressed, the
"thou" of these chapters, which is either the individual
Israelite or the whole community, has been held by some to
indicate that the individual offerer was the only agent in
sacrifice. But that is to press the word too far. Even in
Leviticus, while the whole people are addressed, the actions
enjoined or prohibited are such as are done by "any man
of them," and in Deut. xii. 13 we have precisely the
same expression, "Take heed to thyself that thou offer
not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest,"
used at a time when there was undeniably a priestly tribe
and even the High Places had a regular priesthood. But
while in Exod. xx.-xxiii. there is no evidence to show
whether a priesthood existed, in the previous chapter
(xix. 22, 24) priests who "come near to Yahweh" are
twice mentioned. This would be a fact of the first importance
were it not that the words occur in a passage
which is admitted to be in its present shape the work
of the later editor. Dillmann maintains, and with good
reason, that he has inserted and adapted here a fragment
of J. If so then J may have held the view that there were
priests before Sinai was reached, but under the circumstances
we cannot be certain that the mention of them
may not be an anachronism introduced by the later hand.
In favour of the view that it is so is the fact that in the
account given by JE of the ratification of the Covenant
between Yahweh and the people (Exod. xxiv. 1 ff.), Moses
erected an altar and then "sent the young men of
the children of Israel which offered burnt offerings and
sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto Yahweh." He
himself however performed the specially priestly act of
sprinkling the blood upon the altar. Had there been
priests or Levites accustomed to perform priestly functions,
we should have expected them to act, instead of "the
young men of the children of Israel." But, on the other
hand, we must not omit to notice that the Levites occupy
in all these transactions, as narrated by JE, a very prominent
position. Dillmann,[11] as we have seen, separating
J and E, considers that the passages in which priests
before the Sinaitic legislation are spoken of belong to J,
and adds: "Indeed, it appears from Exod. iv. 14, 'Is not
Aaron the Levite thy brother?' and xxiv. 1, 9, that for
him even then the Levites were the priestly persons."
To these passages Driver adds Exod. xviii. 12: "And
Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took a burnt offering and
sacrifices for God; and Aaron came, and all the elders of
Israel, to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before God."
Further, Nadab and Abihu are Levites, nay, sons of Aaron,
and in Exod. xxiv. 1 and 9 they go with Moses, Aaron,
and the seventy elders as the complete representation of
the people, and Moses, himself a Levite, performs all the
greater priestly acts.[12] Moreover JE knows of the ark,
and speaks frequently of the "tent of meeting" (Exod.
xxxiii. 7 ff.; Numb. xi. 24 f., xii. 4 ff. and Deut. xxxi.
14 ff.). But a very notable thing in connection with the
inquiry as to the performers of priestly duties appears in
Exod. xxxiii. 7 ff., where E's account of the "tent of
meeting" is given. When Moses turned again into the
camp "his minister (mesharetho) Joshua, the son of Nun,
a young man, departed not out of the tent," yet Joshua
was an Ephraimite (1 Chron. vii. 22-27). In Exod. xxxii.
29, however, the same authority describes the consecration
of the Levites to the priesthood, after the apostasy of the
golden calf.
In Deuteronomy, on the contrary, the priests are very
prominent; they are called, however, the Levitical priests,
or priests simply, but never sons of Aaron. The whole
tribe of Levi is regarded as priestly in some sense. They
constitute, in fact, a clerical order, though there are clear
indications of ranks, of men being assigned to special
duties. Curiously enough, the tribe thus highly honoured
is spoken of as being notoriously and all but universally
poor. No sacrifice can legitimately be offered without
them; and, though the question of the place of sacrifice has
not yet been finally settled, the position of the Levitical
priests as sacrificers is so entirely established that it is
regarded as needing neither assertion nor justification.
Nay, in one passage, Deut. x. 6—which there is no
valid reason, except the wish to get rid of its contents,
for supposing to belong to another authority than D[13]—the
hereditary succession to the chief place among the priesthood
is assigned to the family of Aaron. In xviii. 5 also
the hereditary character of the priesthood is asserted in
the words, "For Yahweh thy God hath chosen him—i.e.
the priest—out of all thy tribes, to stand to minister in
the name of Yahweh, him and his sons for ever." As for
the body of the Levites, their position is somewhat ill-defined.
On the authority of xviii. 6 ff. many claim that
at the date of Deuteronomy every Levite was, at least
potentially, a priest, that in fact Levite and priest were
synonymous. But, as will appear in the exposition of the
verses referred to, that is a very questionable proposition.
Nevertheless it cannot be denied that in Deuteronomy the
line between priests and Levites is a very indistinct one;
there is prima facie reason to believe that it could be
passed, and the gap between the two is certainly not nearly
so wide as it appears to be in the undeniably post-exilic
literature.
In the Priest Codex again, the priesthood is confined
exclusively to the house of Aaron, with the high priest
at their head. The Levites have no possible way of
entrance into the priesthood. They are Yahweh's gift to
the priests, and are confined most strictly to the duty of
waiting upon these in the ministration of the Sanctuary.
They have none but the most subordinate share in the
sacrifices; they are shut out from the holy places of the
Tabernacle; and they have assigned to them cities in
which they may dwell together when they are not on
duty at the Sanctuary. There is no word there of Levites
being poor, and altogether the position of the tribe is,
through the priests, much more dignified and prosperous
in a worldly sense than we found it to be in Deuteronomy.
Now, taking all these data together, we find here, just
as we did in the previous section, that the Levitical law
is a disturbing element between Exodus and Deuteronomy.
If we take it out of the way, J, E, and D harmonise well
enough. The main difference is that the latter shows
the same fundamental conditions as we find in the former,
only consolidated and developed by time, but by a longer
time than forty years. In fact D makes explicit that
importance of the Levites which is only hinted at and
foreshadowed in JE. They have come to be the only
authorised agents of sacrifice; they have a hereditary
headship in the house of Aaron; various orders and
degrees must be held to exist (cf. Deut. xviii. 1 ff.).
Compared with this state of things, the Levitical arrangements
of P, supposed to have been given thirty-eight years
before, are very different. In every respect they are more
definite, more detailed, and show a much more differentiated
organisation than those sketched in Deuteronomy.
These latter indicate a state of matters which would suit
admirably as an embryonic stage of the full-grown
Levitical system, and which can hardly be fitted into
their place otherwise.
It is suggested, in reply, that allusions in Deuteronomy
imply the existence of a system of a much more elaborate
kind than any that we could construct from the explicit
statements of the book, and that is certainly true. But
no reasonable interpretation of these allusions can lead
us to a system identical with that in P. Nor can Deuteronomy's
use of the name Levites (though undoubtedly
it has been pressed by some too far) be held to be consistent
with the public recognition of the "great gulf
fixed" in P between the Aaronic priests and the Levites
as a body. Nor will the fact that Deuteronomy is the
people's book, and is consequently not called upon to go
into technical details, cover the difference. Indeed nothing
will, short of recognising the fact that, as publicly acknowledged
organisations, the tribe of Levi in P and the tribe
of Levi in D are different, and that the state of things in
D's day is earlier than that in P. If this is not so, then
the Levitical legislation, conceived as given by Moses,
must be held to have proved impracticable, and Deuteronomy
must then be regarded as an abrogation of it for
the time.
And the same conclusions suggest themselves if we
look more closely into the curious fact that Deuteronomy
always speaks of the Levites as poor. Some have supposed
that this poverty is the result of the centralisation of the
cultus which the author demands, and that the constant
insistence that the Levite shall be invited to all sacrificial
feasts, along with the widow and the orphan, and other
helpless classes, is a provision against the poverty to be
brought upon them by the abolition of the High Places.
But that is not so. We know the manner of the Deuteronomist
when he is providing for contingencies arising
from the new state of things he wishes to bring about,
and it is quite different from his manner here. Clearly,
the Levites were poor before the suppression of the High
Places, and were so, as Deuteronomy tells us, from the
fact that they had no inheritance in the land. But that
poverty is not consistent with their whole position as
sketched in the Levitical legislation. There we have
the Levites launched as a regularly organised priestly
corporation, endowed with ample revenues, and ruled
and represented by a high priest of the family of
Aaron, clothed with powers almost royal, surrounded by a
priestly nobility of his own family and by a bodyguard of
tribesmen entirely at his disposal. Such a body never
has remained chronically and notoriously poor. In the
wilderness they would not be so in contrast with others,
for all were poor, and there was nothing to hinder the
Levites having cattle as the other tribes had, and being
on the same level as they. In the promised land, instead
of becoming poor, they would at once enter upon the
enjoyment of their various tithes and dues, and would
moreover have such a share in the booty of Canaan as
would more than make up at first for their want of a
heritage. The priests were to receive one five-hundredth
part of the army's half, and the Levites the fiftieth share
of the people's half (Numb. xxxi. 28 ff.). Gradually, too,
they would be put in possession of the priestly cities.
Evidently, therefore, if the Levites were ever poor, it cannot
have been till some time after Israel had been settled in
the land, and then only if P's laws and organisations of
the tribe were not enforced.
Deuteronomy supports the same argument. Since
want of a heritage was the cause of the Levites' poverty,
they cannot have been exceptionally poor in the wilderness.
Nor can they have been poor during the time
of the conquest; for even if the Levitical law was in
force and the tribe was then wholly organised for the
priesthood, they must have shared in the fighting and
the spoil. But if the order of legislation, as we maintain,
was (1) Exodus xx.-xxiii., (2) Deuteronomy, (3) the
Priest Codex, then as the booty from war ceased to
be a source of income, the Levites as a body remaining
nomads, while the other tribes became agricultural, would
necessarily become poor in comparison with their fellow-countrymen.
It is out of that state of things the Deuteronomist
speaks.[14]
The same conclusions follow when the regulations are
examined which bear upon the support of the priestly
tribe. The outstanding matters in this department are
tithes and firstlings. Space will not admit of a full discussion
of these topics; but if the reader will compare, in
regard to tithes, Numb. xviii. 21-24 and Lev. xxvii. 30, 32,
with Deut. xii. 17, and in regard to firstlings Numb. xviii.
18 with Deut. xii. 6, 17 f., and xv. 19 f., he will see that
the application of tithes and of firstlings according to
Deuteronomy is quite different from that in the Levitical
legislation. The difference is such as will not comport
with the hypothesis of a single legislator and a consistent
legislation. Expedients with a view to solve the difficulty
have been suggested by Keil and others; but each of those
expedients is burdened with specific difficulties of its own.
The inevitable conclusion from all this would seem to
be that in the Deuteronomic as in the Levitical laws we
have not the legislation of Moses or of his age alone.
The roots of all the legislative codes are Mosaic, but in all
save perhaps the Book of the Covenant the trunk and
branches are of much later growth. The authors of them
are not careful to distinguish what came from Moses
himself from that which had been developed out of it
under the influence of the same inspiration. In both
D and P there were Mosaic elements, and in both there
are laws not given by him. To disentangle these completely
now is impossible, and it is probably best for
expository purposes to take the codes as giving what the
Mosaic legislation had become at the time of the writer.
What we have in Deuteronomy therefore cannot be better
described than in Driver's words (Introduction, p. 85), as
"the prophetic re-formulation and adaptation to new needs
of an older legislation." Its relations to the other codes
are as the same critic states (p. 71): "It is an expansion
of that in JE (Exod. xx.-xxiii.); it is, in several features,
parallel to that in Lev. xvii.-xxvi.; it contains allusions
to laws such as those codified in some parts of P, while
from those contained in other parts of P it differs widely."
And the state of things in which these various codes
originated is more and more coming to be conceived in
the manner stated by Dr. A. B. Davidson.[15] "It is
evident," he says, "that two streams of thought, both
issuing from a fountain as high up as the very origin of
the nation, ran side by side down the whole history of the
people, the prophetic and the priestly. In the one Jehovah
is a moral ruler, a righteous king and judge, who punishes
iniquity judicially or forgives sins freely of His mercy.
In the other He is a Person dwelling among His people
in a house, a Holy Being or Nature, sensitive to every
uncleanness in all that is near Him, and requiring its
removal by lustrations and atonement. Those cherishing
the latter circle of conceptions might be as zealous for the
Lord of Hosts as the prophets. And the developments
of the national history would extend their conceptions and
lead to the amplification of practices embodying them, just
as they extended the conceptions of the prophets. A
growth of priestly ideas is quite as probable as a growth
of prophetic ideas. That the streams ran apart is no
evidence that they were not equally ancient and always
contemporaneous, for we see Jeremiah and Ezekiel both
flourishing in one age. At one point in the history the
prophetic stream was swelled by an inflow from the priestly,
as is seen in Deuteronomy, and from the Restoration
downwards both streams appear to coalesce."
The actual date of Deuteronomy still remains to be
settled. Already it has been brought down to post-Solomonic
days. How much later must it probably be
put? The book must have been written before the
eighteenth year of Josiah, 621 B.C., for the Book of the
Law which was then found in the Temple was undoubtedly
not the whole Pentateuch, but approximately
Deut. i.-xxvi. But it can hardly have been produced
in Josiah's reign, because it would never have been
permitted to drop out of sight had it been known to
that pious king and the reforming high priest Hilkiah.
On the other hand, it can hardly have been written or
known before Hezekiah's reforms, for otherwise it would
have been made the basis of them, as it was made
the basis of Josiah's. Probably, therefore, we may date
it between Hezekiah and Josiah. Indeed we may with
great likelihood affirm, as Robertson Smith suggests, that
it was the need of guidance caused by Hezekiah's reforms
which suggested and called out this book.[16]
But, say some, if the body of the book is not Mosaic,
then this is nothing else but forgery, and no forged or
even pseudonymous book can be inspired! Others again,
most gratuitously, suppose that Hilkiah found the book
only because he had forged it and put it where it was found.
But there is neither need nor room for such suppositions;
and our effort must be to conceive to ourselves the means
by which such a book could come into existence, and
be found as it was, without fraud on the part of any
one.
To modern, and especially Western notions, it seems
difficult to conceive any legitimate process by which a book
of comparatively modern date could be attributed, so far as
its main part is concerned, to Moses, and published as
Mosaic. But if we take into account the character of Deuteronomy
as only an extension and adaptation of the Book of
the Covenant set in a framework of affectionate exhortation,
and that all men then believed that the Book of the Covenant
was Mosaic, we can see better how such action might
be considered legitimate. Even on modern and Western
principles we can see that; but at that early time and in
the East, literary methods and literary ideas were so
different from ours that there may have been customs
which made the publication of a book in this way not
only natural but right. An example from modern India
will make this clear. Among the sacred books of the
Hindus one of the most famous is the Laws of Manu.
This is a collection of religious, moral, and ceremonial
laws much like the Book of Leviticus. It is generally
admitted that it was not the work of any one man, but of
a school of legal writers and lawgivers who lived at very
various times, each of whom, with a clear conscience and
as a matter of course, adapted the works of his predecessors
to the need of his own day. And this practice,
together with the belief in its legitimacy, survives to
this day. In his Early Law and Custom (p. 161)
Sir Henry Maine tells us that "A gentleman in a high
official position in India has a native friend who has
devoted his life to preparing a new Book of Manu. He
does not, however, expect or care that it should be put in
force by any agency so ignoble as a British-Indian Legislature,
deriving its powers from an Act of Parliament not
a century old. He waits till there arises a king in India
who will serve God and take the law from the new
'Manu' when he sits in his Court of Justice." There
is here no question of fraud. This Indian gentleman
considers that his book is the Book of Manu, and
would be amazed if any one should question its identity
because he had edited it; and he supposes that the king he
looks for, if he should come in his day, would accept and
act upon it as a Divine authority. So strangely different
are Eastern notions from those of the West. It is legitimate
to suppose that this Eastern book originated in
something of the same fashion. In the evil days of
persecution, when all the prophetic spokesmen were cut
off, and when the priests were occupying the chief
position among the supporters of pure religion, some
pious man, inspired, but not with the prophetic inspiration,
set himself, like this modern Hindu, to re-write and
adapt the legislation which he believed to be Mosaic to
the needs of his own day. Altering the fundamental
points as little as might be, he developed it to meet the
evils which were threatening the Mosaic religion; and he
inspired it with the passion for righteousness and the
love of God which had already thrilled the hearts of
faithful men in Israel through the ministry of the great
prophets. Hoping for the coming of a king who should
serve God and judge Israel out of this new Book of Moses,
but while the darkness still clouded the future, he died,
committing his book to some temple chamber where he
might hope that it would be discovered when God's set
time should come. In such a supposition there is perhaps
something to shock the conventional theories of our time.
But, so far as can be seen, there is nothing to shock
any open-minded man who knows how widely ancient
and Eastern thought differs from modern and Western
thought. It is certain that at this day Eastern men of
the highest character and of the most burning zeal for
religion would act in this manner without a qualm of
conscience. We may well believe, therefore, that in
ancient days it was the same. If so, this was a literary
method which inspiration might well use; and the supposition
that Deuteronomy was so produced is certainly
more consistent with its history and character than any
other. It explains how it so exactly met the needs of
the time and summed up all its aspirations; and it gives
to its claim of inspiration a new support by laying bare
the circumstances of its birth and its psychological presuppositions.
But it may still be asked, what are we to think of the
Mosaic speeches, which, as has been seen, contain, to
say the least, much non-Mosaic matter? The answer
probably is that in these, as in the laws, the author relies
upon earlier documents. From the appearance in the
codes of laws which would have little or no meaning if
originated in the time of the Deuteronomist, it has rightly
been concluded that there are very ancient and Mosaic
elements in them. So, in the speeches there are references
and allusions that suggest an ancient tradition of
a final address of Moses, and perhaps a written account
of its general purport, in which even a hope that the
worship might be centralised may have been contained.[17]
This the author has adapted to his purpose of inciting his
contemporaries to be faithful to the Mosaic teaching, and
has woven into it all that later experience could suggest
as effective ground of exhortation. So much as that
all ancient historians would have done, and some moderns
would do, without the faintest intention to deceive, or
any feeling of guilt; and so much may probably have
been done here. Delitzsch,[18] Robertson Smith,[19] and
Driver[20] are all at one as to this, and in the proofs they
produce of the necessity of accepting this view. In the
words of Driver, "It is the uniform practice of the Biblical
historians in both the Old and New Testaments to represent
their characters as speaking in words and phrases
which cannot have been those actually used, but which
they themselves select and frame for them." The speeches
of David in Samuel and Chronicles serve for examples.
In Samuel he speaks in the language of Samuel, in
Chronicles in the language of Chronicles. "In some of
these cases," Driver continues, "the authors no doubt
had information as to what was actually said on the
occasions in question, which they recast in their own
words, only preserving, perhaps, a few characteristic
expressions; in other cases, they merely gave articulate
expression to the thoughts and feelings which it was
presumed that the persons in question would have entertained.
In the Deuteronomic speeches both these
characteristic methods have probably been employed, and
we must just accept the inspired record for what it reveals
itself to be, setting aside, with the inevitable sighs, our
own à priori assumptions of what it ought to be."
These then are the conclusions regarding Deuteronomy
on which the exposition offered here will rest. They
have been reached after a careful consideration of the
evidence on both sides, and are stated here not altogether
without regret. For, as Robertson Smith has well said,[21]
"to the ordinary believer the Bible is precious as the
practical rule of faith and life in which God still speaks
directly to his heart. No criticism can be otherwise than
hurtful to faith if it shakes the confidence with which the
simple Christian turns to his Bible, assured that he can
receive every message which it brings to his soul as a
message from God Himself." Now, though it can be
demonstrated that the view of Scripture which permits
of such conclusions as those stated above is quite
compatible with this believing confidence, there can be
little doubt that Christian people will for a time find great
difficulty in accepting this assurance. The transition from
the old view of inspiration, so complete, comprehensible,
and effective as it is, to the newer and less definite
doctrine, cannot fail to be trying, and the introduction
of it here cannot but be a disturbing influence which it
would have been greatly preferable to avoid.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that to the minds
of the working ministry and of their earnest fellow-labourers,
who come into constant contact with the actual
needs of men, the change should be unwelcome. But it
cannot now, in my judgment, be avoided. Even the best
and most scholarly work of those who still hold the traditional
view does not convince. Rather it is their writings,
more even than those on the modern side, which make it
clear that the traditional view can no longer be held. These
writers admit the facts upon which their opponents' case
rests, and then explain them all away, harmonising everything
by a crowd of hypotheses, often scholarly, generally
acute, but almost always such as can be accepted only if we
know beforehand that the view they support is true. But
far too many hypotheses are needed. Each case has to be
set right by a special effort of the imagination; while the new
view has this great advantage, that it makes room for all
the facts, by a hypothesis, suggested not by one difficulty,
but by almost all the discrepancies and difficulties which are
encountered. And, after all, this view does not move men
away from the central truth of inspiration, even as it was
conceived by the last generation. Apart from any care
for averting errors in detail which can be ascribed to
Divine wisdom according to the old view or the new,
the central thing in both surely is the revelation of God
Himself. It was always God that was held to be
revealed, and this the advocates of the newer view
insist upon most strenuously. They hold that chosen
men, the wisest, best, most truthful of their respective
generations, those who travailed most in thought, received
exceptional impressions of the Divine nature. They
saw God, and their whole being bore the impress henceforth
of this illumination. In every word and act the
light they had received found expression for itself. They
did not receive this revelation in mere propositions
about God, which had to be carefully repeated with
minute verbal accuracy. They saw, and their natures
were in their degree uplifted, changed, and harmonised
with the Divine. They could no more be false in speaking
of what they had thus experienced, than a sincere
and tender nature can be false in speech or thought
about death, when it once has found its love frustrated
and overborne by that dread messenger of God. The
impression in both cases is true as it is final, and it will
triumphantly convey itself to others with substantial and
effective truth, whatever the man's knowledge or ignorance
otherwise may be. When a man has received an
impression, or a sight of God which has shaken his very
soul, will it be lost in its essential parts because in the
speech in which he utters it he shows ignorance of
science, or accepts as simply true the historic knowledge
of his day? The thing is impossible. The light that
is within him must shine out, even though the medium
through which it shines be here and there blackened
by imperfection. In the fundamental point, therefore,
the old school of critics and the new are entirely at
one. On the basis of this essential harmony it should
be possible for each to speak to the other for edification.
This is what has been attempted here; and if those who
hold by the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy will
tolerate the opposite view, they will find that in dealing
with the Scriptures as a revelation of God, and as an
infallible guide in all that concerns religious and moral
truth, there is no difference. To make the sacred word
living and powerful as an instrument of spiritual regeneration
is our common effort; and our common hope must be
that, if in anything we have been led into error, the
mistake may be discovered and removed, before it has
wrought evil in the Church of God.